Growth Mindset at South Parade

At South Parade we are committed to ensuring that our children achieve and reach their full potential both personally and academically. We are using the vehicle of ‘Growth Mindset’ throughout school in order to demonstrate to our children that through hard work and dedication they are capable of reaching their goals.

What is a Growth Mindset?

Mindsets are beliefs about yourself and your basic qualities such as your intelligence, your talents and your personality.

Fixed Vs Growth Minset

Fixed Mindset

People with a fixed mindset believe that their traits are just given to them, so people with this mindset worry about how adequate or inadequate they are instead of developing their traits. They believe that their talent alone creates success- without effort and they are reluctant to take on challenges.

Growth Mindset

People with a growth mindset, on the other hand see their traits as just the starting point and that these can be developed by dedication, hard work and effort. This view creates resilience and a love of learning, because they can see that hard work pays off!

Growth Mindset in action

We have introduced Growth Mindset as part of our weekly whole school SEAL assembly. Each week the children are introduced to a key word such as: perseverance, dedication and resilience. Class teachers display this word and award raffle tickets when children display characteristics from the ‘word of the week’.

Alongside this, our children have enjoyed following the characters from ‘Class Dojo, learning strategies of how to achieve a Growth Mindset.

Teachers are incorporating Growth Mindset into their teaching and our classrooms showcase posters and quotes to motivate our children.

We use the iceberg analogy with our children, exploring the hidden attitudes and qualities which lead to success. As part of this we have looked at successful famous people who have faced many setbacks before achieving their goals and ambitions. For example, did you know that Walt Disney was sacked in his early career from a newspaper company because they said he was ‘lacking imagination’ ?